THE GEOLOGY OF SAN FRANCISCO PENINSULA. 



Dr. Harold VV. Fairbanks accuses me in a paper published 

 in the last number of the Journal of Geology of ignoring him. 

 I have written a "Sketch of the Geology of the San Francisco 

 Peninsula" and in doing so I have "given my attention almost 

 exclusively to a narrow field of complex geology and have failed 

 to make use of the results of the work of others." "Others" 

 is a modest euphemism for Dr. Harold W. Fairbanks, as appears 

 from a succeeding statement to the effect, that, in my paper 

 "there is a failure to give recognition to some contemporaneous 

 and earlier work in the same general field," which statement is 

 annotated by a reference to a paper of his published as a bulletin 

 of the Geological Society bearing the date December 1894. If 

 the charge applies to this particular paper it is baseless. My 

 "Sketch" was forwarded for publication in June 1894, six 

 months or more before the appearance of the bulletin which he 

 insists should have been recognized. If it applies to earlier 

 papers I must plead charitable motives in gently passing them 

 over without comment. Justice, too, joined with mercy in bar- 

 ring me from quoting from his earlier papers statements which 

 he has since repudiated, as for example, regarding the age of the 

 granite of the Coast Ranges. It would have been scarcely fair 

 to quote from himself views in which it now "seems to him there 

 is no validity whatever." Dr. Fairbanks is fortunately not to be 

 measured by his earlier papers, and the marked improvement in 

 his later work, due in some measure to good University labora- 

 tory discipline, commands the respect and recognition which it 

 deserves. 



Evidently grieved at the supposed discourtesy with which he 

 charges me. Dr. Fairbanks proceeds to subject my "Sketch" to 

 a " friendly criticism." The friendliness is gratefully appreciated 

 but the object of it is troubled with an uncanny curiosity as to 



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